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JAINA THEORIES OF REALITY AND KNOWLEDGE
some to degrade mind and rob it of its richness and value."
The mere magnification of the mental principle into a cosmic one and the description of its function as an act of objectivisation does not make the real either any the less mental or the more objective. The ghost of objectivity or independence cannot be laid by the magic of verbal trickery. It comes back in some kind of awkward form as an empirical' or 'epistemic' phenomenon or an 'antithesis'.
There is, therefore, nothing strange in the fact that the mind-ridden Absolute Idealism gave rise to the curious doctrine of DrstisȚstivāda or Jñätasattāvāda of Prakāśānanda and others, which affirms that a thing exists only when it is perceived. In this view the "blue", for instance, and its awareness are one, and there is no external object apart from its cognition.”* Alluding to this view an Indian critic observes : “The whole world is thus only a psychic modification and has no reality outside the mind." Prakāśānanda himself observes: "The wise maintain the psychological ideality of the world, the ignorant its objective reality."
1. "The Basis of Realism” (p. 1), an Address by S. Alexander to
the British Academy in 1914. 2. P. N. Srinivasachari's Aspects of Advaita (Sri Krishna Library
series, Madras, 1949), p. 16. 3. Ibid. See also pp. 97-98. 4. Jñanasvarüpamevāhur jagadetadvicakşanāḥ / arthasvarūpari
bhrāmyantah paśyanteti kudrsţayaḥ // The following line also expresses the same idea more pithily: drştireva bhavet srştird!'sţiştstimate../
These lines have been quoted in M. N. Sircar's The System of Vedāntic Thought and Culture (published by University of
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